THE FLEECE AS RAIN CLOUD

The association of the Golden Fleece with rain probably originates in a fiction concocted by the Order of the Golden Fleece. The Catholic Church considered a pagan icon to be inappropriate for an order of knighthood, so the Order created the official line that the Order's Golden Fleece was in fact the fleece of Gideon from the Biblical book of Judges. This fleece was associated with moisture from the sky:

Gideon said to God, “If you will save Israel by my hand as you have promised—look, I will place a wool fleece on the threshing floor. If there is dew only on the fleece and all the ground is dry, then I will know that you will save Israel by my hand, as you said.” And that is what happened. Gideon rose early the next day; he squeezed the fleece and wrung out the dew—a bowlful of water. Then Gideon said to God, “Do not be angry with me. Let me make just one more request. Allow me one more test with the fleece, but this time make the fleece dry and let the ground be covered with dew.” That night God did so. Only the fleece was dry; all the ground was covered with dew. (Judges: 6:36-40)

The modern theory that the Golden Fleece originally represented a rain cloud and weather magic was first proposed by the German scholar Peter Wilhelm Forchhammer in his 1837 book Hellenika, which was never released in English. The theory found some adherents and continued to be cited as a favored explanation down until the beginning of the twentieth century, not least in the influential eleventh edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica (1911).

Epitome of Ancient, Mediaeval, and Modern HistoryKarl Ploetz1883

KARL PLOETZ (1819-1881) was a German historian who created a monumental chronological world history. It was first published in English in 1883 and remained a more-or-less standard text for many years.This myth seems to have been originally purely symbolical. The golden rain, which Nephele, that is, the "cloud," sends, is a representation of the fertilizing power of rain-clouds. The cloud-ram departs to his home, the land of the sun-god. His fleece, a pledge of blessing, is brought back by Jason (the "healer," the "bringer of blessings"), with the help of the daughter of the son of the sun, Aeetes, who is learned in magic. This myth was afterwards expanded and localized in a manner which hints at the early voyages of the Pelasgic Minyae. The principal site of the wealth and power of the Minyae was Orchomenos in Boeotia; but the gulf of Pagasae, on which Iolcos is situated, is the scene of their early intercourse by sea. Source: Carl Ploetz, Epitome of Ancient Mediaeval, and Modern History, 9th ed., trans. and ed. William H. Tillinghast (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1883), 46.

HERMANN STEUDING was a German scholar who wrote an influential handbook of Greek and Roman myth. Carl Pomeroy Harrington and Herbert Cushing Tolman translated it into English in 1892 and in so doing added explanations of myth, including this explanation of the Golden Fleece as a rain cloud.

The myth of the golden fleece seems to have developed principally in Orchomenus. King Athamas, who of course is closely related to the Athamantian plains near Halos in the Thessalian Phthiotis, had from Nephele ('cloud') the children Phrixus and Helle. When his second wife Ino instigated him to sacrifice Phrixus to Zeus Laphystios, to remove the unfruitfillness of the land, Nephele carried off her children through the air upon a golden-fleeced ram furnished her by Hermes. On the way Helle fell into the arm of the sea named after her (Hellespont), while Phrixus successfully reached Aea, the land of the light of sunrise and sunset, which was located sometimes in the east and sometimes in the west. He there offered the ram in his stead to Zeus Laphystios, and hung up its golden fleece in the grove of Ares, where it was guarded by a dragon. In this part of the myth a process of nature is symbolized, the carrying away of a rain cloud gilded by the sun, which is also at other times thought of as a shaggy pelt, being thus picturesquely expressed. On the other hand, the story of the offering and rescue of Phrixus may have originated in the worship of Zeus Laphystios, where for the sacrifice of a human being that of a ram may have been afterwards substituted, a process such as may lie at the foundation of the legend of Iphigenia. The story relating to Helle was perhaps added only to explain the name Hellespont.